Mr Holmes stars Ian McKellen as the great detective in his old age and while it could have proved a touching character study — who are you, not just when your mind starts to fail, but when the mind for which you are famed starts to fail? — it veers off in so many tedious directions that the end product is lumbering and leaden and will require 22 espressos thrown back in quick succession beforehand, along with several Red Bulls, if you are to have any hope of staying awake. (I did not know this beforehand, and therefore dozed quite significantly.) You know, if I were invited to give a talk at some film school, which still hasn’t happened, weirdly, I would say, ‘Kids, before you point a single camera, sit down and ask yourselves: what is this film about? What do I wish to say?’ Bizarre, how many films don’t do this, even though it is so …ahem …elementary?
Loosely based on Mitch Cullin’s novel A Slight Trick of the Mind, and directed by Bill Condon (Dreamgirls, Gods and Monsters, The Fifth Estate), this film finds Holmes late in life, aged 93, retired and living on the south coast, where he tends to his beloved apiaries and bees.
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